
Impostor
2001 · Film · 102 min
Directed by Gary Fleder
A top-secret government weapons designer is arrested by a clandestine government organization on suspicion of being a clone created by the hostile alien race wanting to take over Earth.
3 positive1 neutralfrom 4 commenters
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4 comments on Hacker News
The movie Impostor doesn't get enough credit. The personalized ads credited to Minority Report appeared a year before in Impostor. Both were based on Philip Dick works, so maybe he was the genesis for both.
What I find really ridiculous about this article is that the author is worried about just a single possible use of a world-changing technology. He is concerned that creating real artificial intelligence will allow for the possibility of someone building androids with nuclear bombs inside masquerading as humans, a very specific and frankly ridiculous idea, taken straight out of the movie Impostor or from Philip K Dick's story of the same name.
In reality, the effects of building truly intelligent machines would be so vast, so utterly unpredictable, that worrying about one single possible use of the technology is absurd. Nothing has prepared us to deal with another fundamentally different intelligence on this planet, especially one that would soon outstrip our own. We don't know if we can keep the AIs as our slaves, or whether we would become their slaves, or merge with them, or we would become extinct like the dinosaurs and they would represent a new phase in human evolution.
For more about the risks related to the rise of true AI read this: http://yudkowsky.net/singularity/ai-risk
Screamers is not terrible either. If you liked Impostor you'll like this too: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114367/
Also, this documentary - it has a cheesy framing device, but gives some good insight into PKD's life. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1461696/
Another Phillip K. Dick book turned movie that I enjoyed is 'Impostor' http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0160399/. When I first saw it I did not know it was written by Dick but could tell after an hour or so of watching that it was. Theme wise it is similar to Bladerunner but with a different plot.